affectation, and grows tiresome in the highest degree by a monotonous
sameness of tone.

2
But its worst effect is that, as those who listen to a ballad have their
attention distracted from its subject and can think of nothing but the
tune, so an over-rhythmical passage does not affect the hearer by the
meaning of its words, but merely by their cadence, so that sometimes,
knowing where the pause must come, they beat time with the speaker,
striking the expected close like dancers before the stop is reached.
Equally undignified is the splitting up of a sentence into a number of
little words and short syllables crowded too closely together and forced
into cohesion,--hammered, as it were, successively together,--after the
manner of mortice and tenon.[1]

[Footnote 1: I must refer to Weiske’s Note, which I have followed,
for the probable interpretation of this extraordinary passage.]


XLII

Sublimity is further diminished by cramping the diction. Deformity
instead of grandeur ensues from over-compression. Here I am not
referring to a judicious compactness of phrase, but to a style which is
dwarfed, and its force frittered away. To cut your words too short is to
prune away their sense, but to be concise is to be direct. On the other
hand, we know that a style becomes lifeless by over-extension, I mean by
being relaxed to an unseasonable length.